The sky was filled with stars, and the moon, it was fabulous. I wasn't even upset. Suddenly, I heard... breathing. Somewhere close to me somebody was breathing very heavily. So I crawled out and there, among the boards, was the same girl who had come to our house earlier. I came out from there, and it's hard for me to say whether I just used this as an excuse, or what in fact mattered here. The main thing is that I went home. I went home. They were asleep, but the door was open. I woke my father and told him that the girl he'd sent away was lying there among the boards and that she had typhoid fever. It was my first and only accurate diagnosis as it later turned out. The whole town lived in fear of typhoid fever. Everyone was afraid, and Jews caught typhoid fever.

This is linked to a story which gives some idea of how much this whole situation upset me, this whole thing with the Jews, my relationship to them, and everything. The previous winter, I'd run out of the house early one morning and there in the street were Jews from Janowo, from the camp in Janowo, who you could see always being marched in columns through the streets, and they were clearing the snow from the pavements. In my hurry as I sped out of the courtyard, I ran into one of them. I bumped into him and was immediately filled with dread because of the poster that said a louse equals a Jew equals typhoid fever in which the Jew had this face of a louse. The poster was very suggestive and fear of catching typhoid was extreme. Even now if I try I can recall the ghetto where I used to go quite often with my father because he had a pass and could go in to employ people from the ghetto to work for him. I always had this - as if I was seeing lice - and I moved back behind the fence when I suddenly realised what I was doing, that I was drawing back from another human being. Because of this, along the whole length, I gave myself this penance, as I walked the length of that street, I brushed against everyone of those people as they worked. When I got to the end of the street, it suddenly dawned on me what I'd been doing: here I was, a well fed brat pushing into each one of these malnourished people, so my penance was having the opposite effect.

So when I saw this girl, I said to myself: typhoid fever. I went back home, went in, told my father about this and he said, 'Come, take me there.' He said it very calmly... My father always treated me like an adult, always. After all, it was just me and the two of them - he talked with me as with an adult. Sometimes that could have, or had, unexpected consequences. There's that story with Mrs Kowalik. Some time later he came to me and said that Mrs Kowalik had been shot, that she'd been innocent, but that you're responsible for this, you killed the woman - there was nothing anyone could do. It was that milky-white, sexy lady. So we went there and my father told me to go back home. This was happening after curfew, and the fact that he'd sent me there after curfew was very... that he came with me made me feel good and important. And that was it. After a while he told us that... that we were to go with our mother to hospital where our relative, Zofia Czarnecka, was a patient recovering from typhoid fever. We saw her through a window because we weren't allowed to go into the hospital for infectious diseases - we saw her across the fence. We took her some stewed rhubarb or something like that and she waved to us. She had a white scarf on her head. When someone had typhoid fever, their hair was shaved off, and I remember Zośka with short hair once it began to grow back - I lived with her.

The late Polish activist, Jacek Kuroń (1934-2004), had an influential but turbulent political career, helping transform the political landscape of Poland. He was expelled from the communist party, arrested and incarcerated. He was also instrumental in setting up the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR) and later became a Minister of Labour and Social Policy.

Film director Marcel Łoziński was born in Paris in 1940. He graduated from the Film Directing Department of the National School of Film, Television and Theatre in Łódź in 1971. In 1994, he was nominated for an American Academy Award and a European Film Academy Award for the documentary, 89 mm from Europe. Since 1995, he has been a member of the American Academy of Motion Picture Art and Science awarding Oscars. He lectured at the FEMIS film school and the School of Polish Culture of Warsaw University. He ran documentary film workshops in Marseilles. Marcel Łoziński currently lectures at Andrzej Wajda’s Master School for Film Directors. He also runs the Dragon Forum, a European documentary film workshop.

Cinematographer Jacek Petrycki was born in Poznań, Poland in 1948. He has worked extensively in Poland and throughout the world. His credits include, for Agniezka Holland, Provincial Actors (1979), Europe, Europe (1990), Shot in the Heart (2001) and Julie Walking Home (2002), for Krysztof Kieslowski numerous short films including Camera Buff (1980) and No End (1985). Other credits include Journey to the Sun (1998), directed by Jesim Ustaoglu, which won the Golden Camera 300 award at the International Film Camera Festival, Shooters (2000) and The Valley (1999), both directed by Dan Reed, Unforgiving (1993) and Betrayed (1995) by Clive Gordon both of which won the BAFTA for best factual photography. Jacek Petrycki is also a teacher and a filmmaker.